'America was ready for metal.' How Judas Priest delivered with 'Screaming for Vengeance'

"Screaming for Vengeance" was the perfect album at the perfect time for Judas Priest.

By the summer of 1982, they were uniquely poised to build on the momentum of their 1980 breakthrough, "British Steel," and biggest U.S. hit to date, "Heading Out to the Highway," the opening track on the following year's "Point of Entry."

As the awe-inspiring voice behind those heavy-metal triumphs, Rob Halford looks back fondly on that moment in heavy metal history.

"It was a remarkable time, wasn't it?" he says.

"The '80s and pretty much most of the '90s were the best times for heavy metal. Some of the greatest things were happening at that moment. And particularly for Priest."

He points to MTV and what he calls the "explosion" of rock 'n' roll radio in America.

"There was this sudden embrace, this sudden need for a harder, stronger, tougher experience called heavy metal," Halford says.

"America was ready for metal. Just like how America was ready for the blues, for jazz, for hip-hop, R&B. It's just the timing. You can't make that up. Everything is happening at the right time."

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How 'Screaming for Vengeance' launched them 'into the stratosphere'

A part-time Valley resident since 1981, the man they call the Metal God is on a Zoom call from a hotel room in Bratislava, the largest city in Slovakia, a day after rocking the fans in Bucharest, Romania on the 50 Heavy Metal Years Tour, an apt time to reflect on the 40th anniversary of their most pivotal album. 

Columbia Records was pushing Priest to come through with a record that would seize the heavy metal moment.

"The label was insistent that we kept the foot on the gas pedal and really kept the metal roaring, because they knew — they could sense — that the moment where you've taken off but suddenly the boosters kick in, that was coming," Halford says.

"They told us, 'If we get the record that we feel can launch this band into the stratosphere, the ongoing success from that will really solidify who you are and what you're about in the United States.' And it did. It absolutely did."

"Point of Entry" had done well for Judas Priest, but Halford felt they needed to deliver something more consistent on "Screaming for Vengeance."

"For me, that album had some great songs," Halford says. "But 'Don't Go,' 'Turning Circles,' 'You Say Yes,' what is that? We can't have these quirky things going on. When you put 'Screaming for Vengeance' on from the beginning to the end, it's very linear. There's no real disruptive 'Ooh, why have we gone over here?'"

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'Certain records just happen' and this one happened in Ibiza

Halford and his bandmates — K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton on guitar, Ian Hill on bass and Dave Holland on drums — returned to Ibiza, a Spanish island off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where they'd recorded "Point of Entry," to start work on "Screaming for Vengeance."

"The only reason we went to Ibiza was because we were getting crippled by tax in the U.K.," Halford says. "It was a stupid thing. Why don't you adjust the system so you can keep your talent in your country? So, we were in this idyllic setting in the Balearic Islands, which was so many distractions."

Halford laughs.

"But we got the job done," he says, because regardless of the setting, 'When you close the door, the studio can be anywhere in the world."

There was a lot of spontaneity involved in the creative process in Ibiza with Tom Allom, their go-to producer since the days of "Unleashed in the East," a live album from 1979.

"We've never really been a band to kind of mull about," Halford says. "You're just constantly developing your music. So I think it was just where we were, as a group of musicians, searching our ability, searching our skill, searching our inventiveness. We were a number of albums in, weren't we?"

The bandmates had no real agenda going into those recordings, other than what Halford figures is the same thing every artist goes in thinking: This will be our greatest record yet.

"It's just the way it is for some musicians," Halford says. "Whether it's Aerosmith or AC/DC, Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. Certain records just happen. It's like this big ball of metal in the sky."

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'We just went for it' and made their greatest hit

It's not something Halford feels an artist is aware of in the moment.

"You're not really aware until you've put all the tracks together and you have the sequencing," he says.

"Then you go home and you don't think about what you've done, because you've just been so consumed with it. Then you play it a few weeks later, and you go, 'My God, man, we made a really good record here.'"

They also delivered a really good hit in the headbanging splendor of "You've Got Another Thing Coming, which became their biggest U.S. hit to date.

"'It was the catalyst for how that record grew through rock 'n' roll radio," Halford says. "It was just magical. It was instinctive, intuitive. We just went for it and didn't really overthink it. It's the purest form of creativity, I believe, when you don't think about it too much. You just let the force take you."

As he reflects on the making of "You've Got Another Thing Comin'," Halford launches into his best Groucho Marx imitation.

"We're gonna make a song for radio, boys," he says, in Groucho voice, with the wave of an invisible cigar. "There was none of that."

It was a late addition to the album, though. And the label had suggested that they come up with another song.

"I don't think the label said, 'If you can give us another track we can service to radio, that would be really helpful,'" Halford says. "But I think that the feeling was 'If you can give us a little 'Living After Midnight' but in a different perspective. That kind of attitude. A song that's not a party song per se, but one that's got some, you know, chugging and a solid beat, some headbanging."

They had "the basic plot of the song" in Ibiza, Halford says, but finished it in Florida while doing overdubs.

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'I'm on the radio, mum!'

To Halford's ears, the title track was more the sort of single Judas Priest should have been making at that point in their career.

"You put the construction of 'Screaming for Vengeance' against 'Another Thing Comin',' and internally, you go, 'Meh I'll take this one,'" Halford says.

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"All that intensity and ferocity, that's where we felt we wanted our identity to be focused, We appreciated the success at rock 'n' roll radio with a couple of the 'British Steel' tracks. But the attitude was, 'We're a heavy metal band. We're gonna pour gasoline on the fire.' And that's what we were trying to do with with that record."

He points to the placement of "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" on the back half of the album.

"We buried that song, as you know, on side two of the vinyl because we thought, you know, 'The label wanted this song. Let's just put it over there,'" Halford says. "But the people who worked at Columbia knew exactly the song that was gonna put this band to that next level. And there it was."

Seeing the song take off the way it did was especially thrilling.

"Even now, the biggest kick is when I'm driving back from Safeway and I've got KUPD on and I hear 'Breaking the law' or 'Living After Midnight,'" Halford says.

"I'm on the radio, mum! It's just the biggest thrill in the world because you know that there are thousands of other people driving around town, hearing that song at the same time."

It was even more exciting when the video blew up on MTV.

"Just to be sitting at home, eating a slice of pizza and then your video comes on MTV," Halford. "Oh, my God, look! It's me on the TV and there's a slice of pepperoni in my left hand. It's just crazy, crazy great stuff."

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'That magic metal moment in time'

With "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" as their calling card, Judas Priest's career exploded with the double-platinum triumph of "Screaming for Vengeance," which even now remains their most successful album.

"It's just that magic metal moment in time when all the pieces seem to fit," Halford says.

"Because obviously it's about the music and the songs. But it's everything else that surrounds it. Particularly the eagerness, the real hunger of that particular generation to find their own identity in the music of a band like Judas Priest with that type of metal experience."

Had they come out with that same album six years later, Halford doesn't think it would — or could — have had the same effect on their career.

"Probably not," he says.

"There was just just an extraordinary amount of things going on around the band at that specific moment in time that caught the spark and set the bonfire going. Now, you listen to that record from beginning to the end, and you go 'Wow.' You know, the band was just on fire."

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Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Judas Priest's Rob Halford says US needed 'Screaming for Vengeance'